


Chaos With A Pretty Face

by MintSauce



Series: The Halfway House [14]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: F/M, Kinda, M/M, Mama Milkovich's story, outside pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 15:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/pseuds/MintSauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucile loved a girl once that trailed chaos from the hem of her pretty flowery dresses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chaos With A Pretty Face

Lucile loved a girl once that trailed chaos from the hem of her flowery dresses. It wasn’t a love like her mama would be ashamed of her for, but it was enough to earn a frown.

She loved a girl who couldn’t love her back, in any way. She was too in love with herself to do that.

Monica Allen as she was back then was wild in a way that Lucile envied. She wasn’t from the right side of the tracks. She wasn’t from a good Catholic family with her future all laid out for her.

No, Monica was exactly the opposite of what Lucile was.

She was what her mama warned her against, the devil with a pretty smile.

Monica would slip pills onto Lucile’s tongue with a candy-coated whisper of, _Just try it, sweetie_. Not even thirteen yet and Lucile did. She swallowed that pill like a dutiful little girl, swallowed every other one after that.

She laughed when Monica laughed, linked their arms together and skipped down the streets with her. On the surface, they looked like young girls just being exactly that. Inside though, they were flying high, dancing across coals and reaching out with their swinging arms for the sailors and the dragons that were going to come fly them away.

Monica would always be gone when Lucile came down. She’d always be gone, leaving the other side of the bed cold or leaving Lucile in strange places she had to stagger home from. Then she would be back, like nothing had happened, a new little baggy in her back pocket.

_Just try it, sweetie._

There was never a sudden crack in Monica’s personality. For as long as Lucile had known her, she just was.

She was the face chaos wore. She was a hurricane who danced the lines nobody else could see.

“Meet my friend,” Monica said to her once, the white of the coke still around one of her nostrils. “This is Terry.”

It all went wrong from there. But…

“We’re pregnant together,” Monica sang to her, the idiot she claimed to love but confessed she didn’t lingering in the background. Lucile almost felt sorry for him. She felt sorry for herself more. “We’re practically sisters.”

There was a baby kicking in her stomach, a cheap ring on her finger and her parents hated her. Terry was okay at first, until he discovered the whiskey.

Nicky was born and then so was Fiona.

Lucile had Iggy first and Lip had only just burst into the world when Mickey was born.

“They’ll all be the best of friends,” Monica told her, but there was a mad edge to her eyes that was cementing itself. It terrified Lucile, but then so did Terry’s fists.

She wasn’t very strong anymore.

She wasn’t strong, so she let Terry rampage through her lives. She let him ruin her children. She let him break Nicky, then Iggy and then finally she let him ruin her sweet Mickey.

She could only sit there and rock him in the emergency room, shush him when the nurse set Mickey’s arm in a cast. He wasn’t even two and she was already dutifully saying those words, “He fell,” to protect a man she had never even begun to love.

Mandy was the burst of light that started to pull her out of the shadows.

She screamed and screamed for the first week she was born, but it chased away the demons inside of Lucile’s head. Mandy was her miracle. Especially when you considered that Lucile had been so high, she didn’t even remember most of being pregnant.

Monica returned like she always did, a scrawny, carrot-topped toddler clutched in her arms. He was a funny looking thing, freckles covering his cheeks. He had a smile for Mandy though and it was his laugh that drew Mickey into the room.

Her sweet boy was cautious now, eyes shifty as he crept closer to the woman he sometimes remembered being around. He gazed at the little redhead with the same blue eyes set in each of her children’s faces.

“He’s pretty,” he said, sounding slightly awed.

He’d touched a dirty finger to the baby’s cheek and Monica had laughed. The child had just smiled.

That night when Monica was gone, Terry broke three of Mickey’s fingers with his boot. Lucile cradled her perfect little Mandy close and didn’t hold Mickey this time when he cried. When the nurse looked at her sadly though, she let the tear slip loose.

“He didn’t fall,” she said.

And that was the first time they took her children away. That was the first time she tried to save them.

Years later she sees her son again and he’s almost that sweet boy she thought she’d lost. He cradles the baby that almost broke her perfect Mandy and he smiles up at the boy. The boy who’s a redheaded Gallagher that she suspects is the same. The pretty one.

She’d tell them that irony if she thought either of them would want to listen.

Monica blows back into her life, because of course she does. She always has to. Lucile would worry if she didn’t. She’s straight again now, boyfriend left in another state, but a smile on her face that almost seems real.

She’s got pills in her pocket, but Lucile is a big enough woman now, daft enough and stupid enough to say, “No, thank you.” So she’s sober and Monica isn’t when they talk about their children.

“One of yours is with one of mine,” she says when Monica’s eyes are glassy.

She looks young again, like that girl who introduced her to Terry and ruined Lucile’s life. Sometimes Lucile sort of hates her, most of the time she just feels sorry for her. There’s a sort of comfort in the chaos that is Monica.

“Which ones?” she asks.

“Ian,” Lucile says and Monica perks up. “And my Mickey.”

Monica scoffs. “He’s not been your Mickey for years,” she says and it’s true. It still hurts.

“At least one of my children doesn’t hate me,” she snaps back.

Monica starts to cry at that, but Lucile won’t be sorry.

“Are they happy?” she asks later, sniffling. She’s taken Lucile’s hand and they’re not skipping and there’s no dragons or sailors or hot coals, there’s just a sunken in sofa and the peeling yellow wallpaper.

It’s better this way, Lucile thinks, but sadder too.

She nods. “Yes,” she says, because they’d both looked happy at least.

“Good,” Monica says, with actual conviction. It’s the first time she’s looked like a mother. Even above all those memories Lucile has of her clutching a baby.

It’s probably her first time too.

“At least they’ve found it,” she says.

It’s ironic, Lucile supposes then. That the two that they both failed with are the ones who have succeeded. She fine with that irony though.

Even if the only glimpses she has of her son and Monica’s are from a distance, even if that’s all she gets to taste of their love story. Even if she only gets these snippets, she’d rather they were there than lying here on a moulding carpet, a lunatic beside them with pills in their pocket.

It’s a better future than she could have fashioned for her sweet boy, her lovely little Mickey. She thinks maybe she did save him then after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Boo :D (I'm getting less inventive here, I'm sorry)
> 
> [themintsauce](http://themintsauce.tumblr.com)  
> @BethCottrell


End file.
